Friday Fiction: There is a Season (Part Three and Last)

All in all, Blake visited about half a dozen agents before he gave up. A vague theory, more of an impression, really, was starting to gather nebulously in the back of his mind. As one might expect, anyone who chose a career in the Department of Extranatural Affairs tended to be a sort of eccentric loner. Oh, not misanthropic or unsociable, but isolated by their specialized knowledge. That made them a tightknit fellowship, always glad to see someone they knew would sympathize and understand. They tended to be unmarried, though there were a few husband-and-wife teams within the Bureau, but even fewer ‘unevenly yoked’ families, like James and Francine Mercy, who had been having a garage sale when he visited. Francine was a thoroughly ordinary lady who didn’t like James and Blake talking shop, as she put it. They had met when James had helped her family with a particularly nasty overshadowing; she’d had enough of the extranatural to last a lifetime, she said. Blake left with a cheap little wall clock shaped like a kettle, some ceramic bowls, and the determination to go and see the Director of the Bureau himself with his concerns.

The DEA building was a blank, bland twelve-story structure downtown among many other faceless buildings, almost as if it was insisting on its own normality. When Blake had first arrived in the city, he had half-expected to find some sort of Gothic mansion with a hovering, lightning-laced cloud. Sometimes he still suspected there was some sort of invisible turbulence over it anyway.

It certainly could have used a cloud today: the morning cool had dissipated, and the late summer sun was beating down out of a clear blue sky. The parking lot was a bleak desert Blake had to sprint across before he could reach the relative safety of the concrete porchway.

He found the Director in his office on the very top floor. The building’s air conditioning had failed up there, and Henry Harris Byrd sat sweating at his desk under the ministration of an annoying and inadequate rotating fan that ruffled his paperwork as he tried to review it. His shirt was soaked, his sleeves rolled up, and his tie hung loose and limp around his open collar.

Mr. Byrd was a middle-aged man with a burly football player’s physique that was starting to go to flab. Sweat gleamed on his black balding head. He looked up, half-annoyed and half-relieved at the interruption. His pen drooped in his hand.

“Ah, Mr. Martin, isn’t it?” he boomed. “I haven’t seen you since you started here, I think. Always glad to have one of our younger agents drop in. How is the Strange World treating you? Got the willies yet?”

Blake grinned awkwardly.

“Well, no sir, at least not more so than is professionally necessary for the job. But I have been a little uneasy – I’ve talked with several other agents and observed them - and I thought I’d better run things by you to see if I should be concerned.”

Byrd sat back, pushing away from his paperwork.

“Why don’t you tell me about it? But first, could you bring me a bottle of water from that fridge there? Have one yourself. This heat is killing me, and Mr. Saunders says there’s nothing can be done about it until tomorrow.”

Blake got the bottles, gave Byrd one, then sat down in one of the plain institutional chairs in front of the desk. The boy rolled his bottle between his hands, pondering what to say, as the Director took several deep gulps of icy water then wet a huge red handkerchief and wiped his face and bulging neck. When Byrd had sat back comfortably and seemed attentive, Blake began to try to explain.

“Well, like I said, I’d been feeling uneasy, so I thought I’d go out and beat the bounds, so to say, see what other folks would say. The story was always the same: no unusual activity, but I could see a sort of pattern emerge.”

“Mm-hm.” Byrd’s rumble was noncommittal.

“They all seemed kind of restless and uneasy, too, working it off with some kind of cleaning or preparation. Oh, it wasn’t anything they talked about, but they were all doing it. And I wondered … I wondered if they might be picking up on something, something kind of subtle, maybe a kind of forewarning. I thought I should tell you …” Blake looked at the Director helplessly. It all seemed so vague and flimsy now that he said it out loud. Byrd grunted in annoyance.

“Don’t worry about it, kid. You’re not the first agent to have noticed this kind of thing. It’s just that time of year.”

“What do you mean?”

Byrd slumped forward again.

“The phenomenon is very familiar to the Department. It is not a verifiable occurrence, like the spike around Halloween, but a sort of superstition (well, hardly even that; more of a feeling) that has arisen here in the Bureau of Shadows. Not surprising when you get a batch of sensitive people working together. Near the end of September, before the first day of Fall, most agents get this urge to ‘change their profile’. To some it’s getting rid of their old wardrobe and buying new clothes; easily justifiable with the changing season.” He raised his eyebrows skeptically. “There is a vague feeling (it has never been formulated or codified) that this keeps ghosts and other spirits that agents may have encountered from finding them again when the Dark Season starts.” He shrugged. “I advise you to just ignore it. It never seems to come to anything, really.”

“You think?” Blake was reluctant to let things go.

“I know,” Byrd said firmly. “Just get on with your life.” The phone on his desk suddenly birled insistently. “Just a minute,” he said politely, picking up the receiver and holding it to his ear. “Byrd speaking. Yeah?” He listened intently. “Yeah? Yeah? Okay, I’ll drop by Big Lots on the way home. Yeah. ‘Bye, dear.” He hung up.

“My wife,” he said sheepishly. “We’re … we’re tearing down a wall to make a larger guest bedroom. It’s for the holidays,” he added defensively. “It has nothing to do with … with this thing. Like I said, pay it no mind.”

Blake stood up.

“Of course not, sir. I’m glad you’ve set my mind at ease.”

“Drop in any time, Martin. Don’t be a loner; loners get … odd. Well, odder. It helps if we all regulate each other’s clocks.”

 

By the time Blake got home it was early evening and the day was starting to cool down again. He collapsed down on the couch, thinking of nothing so much as about supper. If the day had not been particularly productive, it had at least tired him out and settled him down. He wondered what to cook, and briefly thought of Parkis’ dehydrated beef stroganoff.  It might have been slightly better than the ramen he would probably be making. He stood up and looked wearily around the little apartment. His paperbacks were scattered everywhere. Slowly, almost thoughtlessly, he began to gather them into a pile. He suddenly considered buying a bookshelf, maybe one of those cheap particle board things from Walmart. Of course, he’d have to arrange the furniture to fit it in. Blake began moving things around in his mind as he picked up books.  He’d know when things felt just right. It was all perfectly logical. And, after all, it was the season. It couldn’t hurt.

6:42 AM, October 4, 2024

Notes

I knew when I first started to think about this story that it wouldn't be a 'Monster of the Week' type tale. Rather it would be about the Bureau of Shadows itself in a more modern incarnation, its agents and 'culture.' I threw in various moods and memories for 'thickening.' I also wanted to have a bit more about Blake at the start of his career and Byrd as he was as Director; he was introduced in Lovett's Last Case as just another agent, though on the leadership track.